Chronicles of the Aeons War, page 66
part #3 of The Omniverse Series
The Caliburn was the first to dock as it was the Grandmaster’s Flagship. Fleet Operations and Coordination came with her Flag; Anuket Station was home of Fleet Command, with Bloom’s Point serving as the master shipyard for the El-Ahur Starfleet. The Five Fleetmasters were scattered between Midian, Anuket Station, Bloom’s Point and the Far Frontier; only the two Fleetmasters at Anuket were able to attend the new Grandmaster’s first briefing in person. The remote presence of the other three appeared as holograms, along with the Bloom’s Point Sentinel. The meeting began without ceremony.
“We have to deploy five hundred thousand Jibrail ships and their crews into the existing Starfleet,” Yeung Acshah said, “That’s just the initial wave. The Jibrail outnumber our current maximum forces two hundred to one. My recommendation would be to maintain existing Jibrail flight groups wherever possible without segregating anyone and integrate what remains into the current fleet distribution; say a ratio of fifteen to one, with flight group command going to the most experienced officers, be they Jibrail or Phenex Starfleet.”
“I’d suggest a joint command,” Bucha Rachael said, “One officer from each fleet serving as the flight group’s commanders; position and rank to be determined by which ship has flag, and what the individual officers’ experience is.”
The new Grandmaster dismissed the suggestion with a wave, “Too disruptive to the existing command structure.”
“No matter how you cut it, you end up with more Jibrail than Phenex ships – and therefore more Jibrail Commands in a fleet,” Fleetmaster Inira Walter said, appearing in holographic form from Sholokhov’s Starfleet the Far Frontier. “That in and of itself is going to be disruptive to the command structure, Grandmaster.”
“I’ll remind the Fleetmaster that by the Queen’s Decree there are no more Jibrail, Phenex, Suphia, Hadosh or Gesheol El-Ahur,” Yeung said coolly, “So it shouldn’t make a difference to anyone how many ships of whose are out where.”
“It does, though,” Inira said, “They outnumber us; we’re in danger of being assimilated–”
“Stow it Fleetmaster,” Yeung said, disbelieving her own authority to call out one of the bloody Fleetmasters. “We’re not fighting for clan or tribe; we’re fighting for the survival of all. We’re all made of the same DNA; we’re fighting for the life of that strand. Against the Zohor, nothing else matters.”
“As you say,” the Fleetmaster stammered, equally unused to Yeung’s authority to speak to him in such a manner, but recognizing the weight of that authority.
After a moment’s pause the new Grandmaster continued, “There is a way, however, to ensure that our presence, the might of the Phenex El-Ahur is still felt throughout the Starfleet, by increasing the number of Flag Officers commanding fleets of their own. How many ship’s Captains do we have that have the experience and competence to be raised to Commodore?” the Grandmaster asked, adding sarcastically, “I can think of a few offhand, but I’ve not really gotten around to meeting all fifty-seven thousand-plus Captains.”
“Fifty-seven thousand, five hundred and sixty-three,” Fleetmistress Kaplan said, “The Fleetmasters will consult with the Admiralty and the College of Commodores; we should be able to give you a list of potentials in two days.”
Yeung nodded, “I’ve requested similar information from the Queen’s Companions. We need to be as equitable as possible with the creation of new Fleets and Flags; there’s going to be enough friction between the ranks, I’m sure.”
“By necessity some fleets will have to be exclusively Jibrail,” Fleetmistress Kaplan insisted. Yeung Acshah could see just a hint of the clear skies of Olympus behind her projection, “Unless you expect individual fleets to have a single, token El-Ahur ship. Their numbers alone make it impossible to do otherwise.”
“I understand they combat the Zohor differently than we do,” Fleetmaster Augustus said, “Something to do with remaining invisible to them?”
“The Jibrail ships used a broadcast signal that mimics Zohor recognition beacons.” Yeung said, “They would just fly up to a fleet and open fire. By the time the Zohor could react to the threat it was too late for them to turn the tide. There is some question as to whether the technology is still viable; if it is, it’s a technology we’re anxious to adopt ourselves.”
“It could have saved a lot of lives if we’d had that one sooner,” Kaplan uttered, “Why wouldn’t the Grandmaster – the other Grandmaster – have brought it back with him?”
“If he weren’t dead, I’m sure we could ask him ourselves,” Yeung said, “Believe me, I’d rather he were here than I. But I suppose this is my punishment for mutiny. I’d still like to know why the Absent Queen couldn’t have stopped that initial Zohor strike...why the Hope’s fleet didn’t find Midian sooner...the lack of answers has always troubled me.”
“Yet, you serve Her as Grandmaster,” Fleetmistress Kaplan said.
“And you remain among the Fleetmasters,” Yeung replied, “We are El-Ahur; we are all called upon to do a great many things.” She sat back in her chair, regarding the five Fleetmasters of the Phenex El-Ahur, live or in hologram, “What matters is the reason we do what we are called upon to do. I do my duty as an El-Ahur because it is my duty. My only ambition is to kill the Zohor. What are your ambitions, Fleetmasters? I may not have utter faith in Her, but never question my loyalty to the Queen; nor give me cause to question yours.”
“As you say, Grandmaster.” They replied, one by one.
♦♦♦
Gabrielle, Queen of Hope and Shekhina Devi, led Her guests to one of the innermost sections of the massive Mother ship. The door was round, its surface rippled and silver. At a touch of Gabrielle’s mechanized hand, it seemed to vanish. They only caught a glimpse of a vast, blue-lit chamber beyond before She stepped in front of the opening and addressed Her guests.
“My Mother’s Gifts are also Mine; so is Her Human Heart: I don’t want people to fear Me or revere Me. I don’t even want to be followed, but as Queen and Supreme Leader of the War Effort, I don’t have any other role or right to choose otherwise. Among the Gifts My Mother bestowed upon Me is the ability to know the Minds of almost everyone. I used to be much better at it...before the Zohor modified me. Among the Collective Mind of everyone’s strongest thoughts and feelings, overwhelmingly, I have sensed two questions. The first question of course, is how we attained the numbers that we have; the ships and crews, the population. The second question is where we and our numbers were, when Midian was first assaulted, and the forces of the Phenex and Suphia devastated.”
She glanced at the doorway behind Her, “Beyond this doorway you will find the answer to the first question. As to the second, I was lost until My Mother and the old Grandmaster found Me. We have always fought for Midian. We have done so in secret and averted tragedy for the Mother world many times. After I was lost, My brethren were searching Zohor-controlled space for Me, fighting through the enemy’s ranks and gaining the knowledge and even some of the weaponry we bring to the War, now.” She paused contemplatively. “As to the question of our numbers, there is a reason we call this ship the Mother ship. Follow me now and find the answers you seek.”
They followed her through the doorway onto a wide, circular terrace of the same silver and black metals of the rest of the ship. At first none of them understood what they were looking at. The blue light shone from the inner surface of the giant, spherical chamber. The entire chamber was lined with luminescent blue orbs by the thousands. They ranged in size from tiny marbles, rolling out from the top of the chamber, gradually growing and changing shape as they rolled slowly, steadily down along the walls. At this level the members of the Council who had come aboard the Ouroboros as the Queen’s guests could see that the orbs were transparent, that something dwelled inside the fluid within. It only took a moment looking at the half-meter-high ovoids farther down to realize what it was they held. The terrace began moving along the outer wall, descending to where the hatchling pods were extracted, opened, and newly-harvested Jibrail El-Ahur was sent to a waiting nursery facility. Except looking at the...for lack of a more appropriate term...newborns, Baxter Vincent and the other delegates from the council realized these were children of perhaps three or four years of age, newly minted with biomechanical grafts already in place.
“This is one of many hundreds of hatcheries we have in the core of the Mother ship,” Gabrielle explained, “We incubate our children for the first three years of their lives, merging the bionic systems into their bodies as we go. They receive some initial teaching and partial interlink interaction while in their pods, and from hatching they go into a nursery environment where they are raised to adulthood by their fellow Jibrail. We increase our numbers and maintain genetic diversity by making each child the product of five different genomes. In order to accelerate the growth process, we’ve shortened the period between birth and Second Change from thirty-eight years to between seven and eleven; our children experience First and Second Change almost simultaneously. There used to be five such Motherships…the Zohor found and destroyed the other four.”
She could sense their shock; She’d expected it. She’d expected surprise. But naively and despite Her great foresight, Gabrielle hadn’t expected the horror, the revulsion that She felt reflected back at Her from the Minds of so many of Her guests. She hadn’t peered down those Paths that led to such reaction and was surprised and caught momentarily off-guard.
“You’ve cloned your whole race…” Benedict Jack stammered.
“No, not cloned,” Gabrielle attempted to explain, “Each Jibrail newborn is genetically unique, the product of five different genetic parents instead of merely two. We’ve created a highly diversified gene bank in order to ensure that chromosomatic breakdown of extensively recombined samples does not occur. In each of these facilities we hatch over twelve hundred new children a day.”
“I don’t know what to feel about this,” the Handmaid said, looking out over the machine; she appeared nauseous, horrified. “It challenges every notion we have about life and birth; in the context of our Faith and our society. The very notion of what it means to be Midianite.”
“How many facilities are there?” one of the Councillors asked.
“Thousands,” the Queen replied, “We seek not just to keep our military forces at strength, but our population as a whole. And there are still tens of millions of natural childbirths every year. Our overall surviving population is equivalent to prewar Midian’s highest numbers.”
“Jesus Christ,” Benedict rasped; “Is this what it’s come to? Is this the best we can hope to achieve? Cyborg babies made in factories, growing up to fight a war or maintain a giant starship? You don’t save Humanity by losing your own Humanity; you’ve turned yourselves into fucking ants for Christ’s sake!”
“We’ve lost nothing,” Gabrielle said patiently, “And gained so much. Our Minds are networked; we share and accept one another as we are and we serve the common purpose of defeating the Zohor and preserving all who have come from Midian. Don’t the histories of the Old Earth say you yourselves had artificial organs, bones, joints, neural implants and even limbs?”
“They were available to those that needed them for health or well-being,” Benedict said, “They weren’t fucking factory-standard features!”
“I’m not looking for your approval, Voyager; nor anyone’s. We did what was necessary to survive, to raise our numbers and to create a force to fight and defeat the Zohor. When our children come into this world they are loved and nurtured, raised to take their part in our society. Our society revolves around two things: preserving, maintaining and operating the Mother ship, and fighting the Zohor. There is another reason we have come to Midian: we wish for our children to be able to breathe the birth world’s air, to walk its ground. Tear’s population was decimated by the Zohor attack, and much of it remains uninhabited. The Children of this Mother ship will settle there. We wish for our children to live among our brothers and sisters, to help rebuild and repopulate Midian. We want our children to have more to live for than just the War and the Mother ship.”
“The Council will need to deliberate…” the Handmaid said, hesitantly.
“It is My Will and My Order; it will be done for I, the Queen command it.”
“My Queen,” the Handmaid placated, “It is not that simple; we have to consider how the people will react to this latest development. You’ve worn the Crown scarcely a week.”
“Are you afraid there will be some sort of upheaval against My rule?” Gabrielle asked, “Rest assured, there will not. I can See the future far more clearly than My Mother ever could. I tell you now that the Jibrail will be welcomed gladly by most, if not all.”
“Not if they know of this…factory.” Councillor Haram said. Then Gabrielle was beside him, arms folded.
“Do you object to how My People come to Be?”
“It’s unnatural,” Haman stammered, “It’s…mechanical…it’s...it’s monstrous!”
“Councillor,” Baxter Vincent spoke up, loudly, “These people are our kin. Their ways are not familiar to us, but that does not make them wrong. External incubation is a common medical procedure.”
“But never on so massive a scale, Commodore!” Haman said, “They mass-produce children as though they were a commodity! Which to hear our Queen tell it, they are! They live to serve this ship or fight the Zohor! The Jibrail El-Ahur are nothing but cloned slaves!”
“The El-Ahur are all sworn to a life of service to the Cause of the Queen,” Baxter said, “Does that make us born slaves?”
“It’s not the same!” the Councillor protested.
From the other end of the terrace came a bitter laugh. Everyone turned to regard the Voyager. Benedict leaned against the rail overlooking the hatchery and looked back at them.
“There it is again,” he said, “Bigotry; the worst of Human behaviour, right there as always among the best of it. Fifteen hundred years or not, nothing’s changed. ‘How can they do this? It’s immoral!’ You make that judgment without even understanding what it’s meant for them to have to live in hiding, in secret, among the colonies and swarms of the very monsters who seek to destroy us. You don’t understand their day to day reality, but somehow you know that how they have adapted in order to survive among the very Zohor they were hunting and destroying on our behalf goes against your fucking moral compunctions…nothing’s changed; nothing’s changed at all.”
Gabrielle regarded him curiously, “Jack, did you really expect that it would?”
♦♦♦
Grandmaster Yeung Acshah set the viewing wall of her quarters to the vantage from Anuket Station’s main docking facility, looking towards the supergiant burning at the heart of the system. Shutting off her room’s main lights flooded the place with cobalt radiance. Yeung sighed and lay lengthwise across her bed. They’d spent hours in council arguing on how best to restructure Midian’s fleets, how to distribute the automated ships coming from Bloom’s Point and who was competent enough to be promoted from Ship’s Captain to Fleet Commodore and given a Flag of their own. She was exhausted and frustrated; in spite of all the supposed progress they’d accomplished little; only one fleet group had been settled, only two names short tracked for promotion to Commodore. Yeung didn’t want to be locked in a meeting room poring over flowcharts and ship’s registries. She was the Grandmaster and she wanted to be leading her ships into battle, into conquest over the Zohor. Instead she was stuck with chattering idiots arguing points of order all day. Yeung began to suspect the Glass Knives of Council were meant to stab a person through the skull and cripple them with blinding headaches.
Somehow she fell asleep like that because the next thing Yeung Acshah was aware of was the trilling of her Comm beacon in her ear and the words INCOMING TRANSMISSION flashing in green against the reddish black of her closed eyelids. She sat up, opening her eyes before ensuring herself presentable for scan and display on someone else’s lens. Confirming her uniform was still on, albeit rumpled she made a gesture that connected her to the call. Her ship’s Captain appeared in a viewing window; she noted the time: still late into the night, well before her next rotation started.
“What is it, Mister Bergeron?” she asked, hoping that she sounded awake.
“Sorry to wake you, Grandmaster,” Bergeron said, “The Queen’s issued new orders to the Fleet; I’m sending them to you, now.”
Yeung’s lenses gave her the option of listening to, reading or downlinking the transcript of the Queen’s Orders directly into her cortical implant; she chose for a direct downlink of the Order Summary. The ships of the Caliburn Fleet were to remain at Anuket; upgrading and refitting of the Phenex Starfleet and completing the Fleet regrouping and personnel assignments for the new Armada. The Ouroboros would take a similar number of new ships with its fleet to Bloom’s Point.
